


I Could Only Be Saved by a Loving Look

by dandelionsknight



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, v8 prediction fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:40:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26779015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionsknight/pseuds/dandelionsknight
Summary: When Yang is standing next to Blake, she feels like they can hear the sound of each other thinking, the ceaseless and worried churning of Yang's thoughts. Blake, too, has things on her mind – Yang can sense their restless energy, but not what they are.Blake says, “White roses are kind of sad, don’t you think?”So focused on Blake, Yang hadn’t even noticed the white rose bush in front of them. “Sad?”“Just that you spend so much time growing them, only for them to have no color. No life.”“They have life,” Yang says, looking back to Blake. “Maybe just not anyone can see how beautiful they really are.”
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long, Bumbleby - Relationship
Comments: 23
Kudos: 128





	I Could Only Be Saved by a Loving Look

**Author's Note:**

> My friend made some incredible art of the first scene of this fic! Check it out on their Twitter and give them some love [here!](https://twitter.com/IrusuVA/status/1333360180965371907)

Yang finds her in the rose garden. Against the sky black with Salem’s storm clouds, she just might be the brightest thing in Atlas, a vision in white. The air is cold, Yang’s breath billowing from her lips, and she knows her partner hates the cold.

“Blake?”

Blake jumps, whirling, cat ears flicking back. Offering her a small wave, Blake relaxes, saying, “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever snuck up on me.”

She grins. “I like to keep you on your toes, Belladonna.”

As Black turns back to the roses, Yang approaches her, shrugging off her bomber jacket. She wraps it around her partner, turning up the collar to keep her neck warm. Her hair is caught under the jacket, so Yang eases it out for her, running her fingers through her short hair, soft and silky sliding between her fingers.

“You don’t have to…I don’t want you to get cold,” Blake says, a pink tinge in her cheeks.

She shrugs. “You know I run hot.” The cold is less uncomfortable to her and more like being in a foreign place; she thrives under the sun.

Willow is sheltering them at Schnee Manor, of all places. With Jacques gone and a thousand other things besides their group hiding right under his nose for Ironwood to worry about, the manor is as close to a safe place as they can get.

Weiss’s bratty little brother hadn’t made an appearance, but she figured Weiss didn’t mind too much. With any luck, this gesture might put her and her mother on the road to healing, however fraught that path may be. Or maybe it won’t. Yang understands the vastness, the hopelessness of distance.

The rose gardens, like anything else of the Schnees, are extravagant, enormous bushes of roses lined up like rows of soldiers in every direction. Yang drinks in the fragrant smell of roses and damp earth, drinks in Blake’s presence beside her. It’s like her to have come out here, yellow light pouring from the windows of the manor, everyone else still awake, raiding the kitchen. Well, almost everyone, and the thought makes her stomach feel like lead.

Yang, Juane, and Ren had made it to the manor only an hour ago, the thrill of discovering the bikes gone, replaced only by disheveled hair, dark eyelids, and heavy muscles. Before Yang could even step off the bike, she saw Blake and then she _felt_ Blake, arms thrown around her neck, cheeks pressed together. Yang hugged her tight, like she was reclaiming an essential piece of herself, sinking into her partner’s embrace.

But everyone else was there, too, so Blake whispered, “We can talk later.”

There on the driveway they divulged the terrible truth: after all their efforts in Mantle, they’d lost Oscar. A Grimm had flown him away to the heart of Salem’s forces. Yang’s mind played through the sensations of the chaotic moment: the rough texture of the hoverbike’s throttle as she gunned it to go faster, chase harder, Ren’s cry of anguish as the Grimm holding Oscar disappeared from sight, unloading a clip of Ember Celica’s shells into the side of the mountain in the hopes the exploding might make her feel better.

The mood inside the manor had been so bleak after that, Ruby suggested making cookies. Penny leaped at the idea (“I have always wanted to try baking!”), and normally Yang would stick around, would assist in the cookie making. But Weiss and Penny and Qrow were all sticking close to Ruby, while Blake was nowhere to be found, and Yang didn’t have it in her. Not without Blake.

Looking down at her hand, where she has two cookies wrapped in a napkin, Yang looks back at Blake. “Want one?”

Black cracks a smile. “They really baked?”

“Sure. The kitchen is pretty loaded. Nora went to town on the first batch…I grabbed what I could for you.”

“I’ll try one,” Blake says, reaching for a cookie.

But Yang picks one up and says, “Say _ah._ ”

She waits for Blake’s reaction, waits to see if she even wants playfulness at a time like this. It’s fine if she doesn’t. But Blake always has a way of surprising her.

Parting her lips, sticking out her pink tongue, Blake says, “ _Ah_.”

Yang hadn’t realized just how _cute_ Blake would look, amber eyes sparkling with mischief, and she hurriedly lifts the cookie to her lips. She tilts her head and smiles, watching Blake’s reaction while she takes a bite and chews.

“Mmm,” Blake says, taking the whole cookie from her. “They’re really good.”

Picking up her own cookie, Yang can smell the warm sweetness of it, the brown sugar in the dough. Crunchy on the outside, but chocolate chips still melty on the inside. It is a good cookie; Summer had taught her to bake these, and then she’d taught Ruby. The memory of their kitchen bathed in sunlight, Tai looking anxious while they used the electric mixer and the hot oven, flour dusted in Ruby’s hair, brings an unexpected lump in Yang’s throat.

“It is,” she says. “Sometimes, Ruby – baking is – ” Yang rolls her shoulders, finally letting them slump. “Ruby’s hurting.”

“Are Penny and Weiss with her?”

“Uncle Qrow, too.” Almost wanting to avoid the subject, the emotional maelstrom inside her sister, Yang goes on, “He told me about your jail break. About how _you_ got a couple hits on Ironwood.”

Blake folds her cat ears back, brushing aside a piece of hair. Her partner can’t pretend to be modest, though, Qrow had described the whole thing to her: Blake swinging herself around a pillar with Gambol Shroud’s ribbon to slam her feet into Ironwood’s chest and leave behind a shadow copy of herself to explode in his face. Yang’s jealous of the pillar - _she_ should have been the one propelling Blake in that fight.

“We all did what we had to for Qrow and Robyn.”

“I’m just sorry I missed it.”

Pulling Yang’s jacket around herself – Yang feels a rush of affection, of possessiveness – Blake says, “Next time. And we’ll check on Ruby when we go inside.”

Always like Blake to remember the details of what she said. “That…sounds like a good idea.”

When Yang is standing next to Blake, she feels like they can _hear_ the sound of each other thinking, the ceaseless and worried churning of Yang's thoughts. Blake, too, has things on her mind – Yang can sense their restless energy, but not what they are.

Blake says, “White roses are kind of sad, don’t you think?”

So focused on Blake, Yang hadn’t even noticed the white rose bush in front of them. “Sad?”

“Just that you spend so much time growing them, only for them to have no color. No life.”

“They have life,” Yang says, looking back to Blake. “Maybe just not anyone can see how beautiful they really are.”

Blake must be a joke, Yang sometimes thinks. She’s so perfectly, so effortlessly beautiful, even with the world about to fall apart, the lock of dark hair that curls against her neck, the way she looks away with her cat ears folded back, smile playing on her lips.

Tugging on the cuff of Blake’s white jacket, she says, “Come on.”

She leads Blake further into the rose garden, brushing aside some of the purple wisteria dripping down from hanging flowerpots. They stop in front of a marble statue of some famous, dead Schnee, but Yang is more interested in the nearby roses, dark red with black seeping into the edges of their petals. Reaching her hand into the bush, she tries to pull one off.

“Careful,” Blake says. “You could prick your finger.”

So like Blake to worry. “I’m being – ow!”

“What happened?”

“…I pricked my finger.”

Blake chuckles as Yang draws her arm out from the bush, examining the pinprick of red on her finger from where she snagged it on a thorn. “Here,” Blake says, handing her the blade form of Gambol Shroud.

“Thanks,” Yang says, feeling like an idiot in front of her. She uses Gambol Shroud to cut the rose off the bush and begin stripping the thorns from the stem. “I guess I could have reached in there with my prosthetic arm, huh?”

“You could have.”

An idea hits her, a way to recover, and Yang looks up at Blake and grins. “I might need someone to kiss it better…”

“Well, Ruby’s still inside,” Blake says.

There’s light playing in Blake’s amber eyes, but Yang can’t sketch the line between playful and serious. Have they ever been able to draw that line, or has it always been like this, ink and color bleeding into one another?

Stepping into Blake’s space, Yang tucks the rose, now free of its thorns, behind her ear, smoothing back her hair. Blake looks like a portrait, like someone’s more perfect memory of beauty.

“Maybe I meant you,” Yang says. She tilts her head and smiles at her partner.

Blake runs a hand through her hair. “I can’t believe I let you go off on your own.”

“Hey, I wasn’t on my own. I had Juane, and Ren, and…” She falters at that last name.

The sensations return – rough throttle, hot engine, anguished cry, Oscar’s body dangling like a toy in the bone-white claws of the Grimm.

“We’ll get him back,” Blake says, looking up at Yang.

Yang shoves her hands in her pockets, scrapes her nails in the gathered dirt and lint. “I…”

Blake touches the inside of her wrist, the tender spot Ember Celica usually covers, and pulls her hand out of her pocket. She holds it between her own two hands – though the backs of them are soft, her palms are etched with callouses, the hands of a fighter. Yang’s are just as rough.

When Blake squeeze her hand, Yang has to clamp down on any tears, stop herself from looking like an idiot. Blake is looking at her so earnestly; Yang wishes she could just plant her here in the garden and let her grow.

Yang says, “I can’t believe I let her take him.”

And the words are so ugly, working their way between her ribs and squeezing around her heart and lungs. The feeling, she knows, reverberates down the red thread that binds her to Blake, the way her partner’s face is like looking into a mirror of her own pain.

“No…no one blames you,” Blake says, and they both know how lame it sounds.

“I do,” Yang says.

Her own judgement undoes her, grows in the cracks of her bones and splits them open. Blake is there, arms around her, just as Yang drops her head onto her shoulder, tears pricking her eyes. Blake cups the back of her head and keeps her anchored, just as Yang feels she’s being swept out to sea, keeps her together just as she feels she’s unravelling. Yang’s crying is silent from years of practice. She couldn’t let Ruby hear her at night, with only a wall between them.

Blake’s neck is wet with her tears, but all she can do is grab fistfuls of her own bomber jacket wrapped around Blake and hold on for dear life.

“It…it could have been Ruby,” Yang mumbles. “It could have been _you_.”

And there it is, the single ugly, audible sob let loose into the still garden. It feels good – Yang has more, but allows herself only the one. Blake sways them softly, stroking Yang’s hair.

“It wasn’t,” she says.

Pulling away, Yang says, “It doesn’t matter. I wouldn’t have been strong enough either way.”

She stares down at her open palms, feeling small, terrifyingly small, smaller than she’s ever felt in her life. What is _happening_ to her? Her eyes swollen, her breath a force of will. She feels so raw, like a wound exposed to open air.

Blake tilts Yang’s chin up. “Not by yourself. We’re protecting each other, remember?”

She blinks. The words almost don’t register. Blake smiles at her, and Yang can feel it, the love and care pouring through the thread between them. The chaos of her own state mingling with Blake’s calming aura. She feels like she’s her, but also Blake, looking at herself, feelings multiplied and reflected and surging between them.

Taking the hand under her chin, Yang rests her cheek against it, and she just _fits_ there, nestled in Blake’s palm.

“You’re right,” she says. “You’re right."

“Let’s sit for a while.”

They settle down at the base of the statue, Blake pressed into her side. Yang wraps an arm around her shoulders and sets her chin on top of Blake’s head, matching her breath to the even rise and fall of Blake’s chest. Some people find comfort in being held; Yang finds it in holding someone else, in having Blake near to her. Her emotions still simmer at the surface, but she focuses on the shapes Blake’s drawing on her thigh. She doesn’t know what they are, but they’re comforting.

“Are you scared?” Blake asks.

“What, of the flying whale monster?” Yang asks, tightening her arm around her partner.

“Be serious.” She can’t see the eye roll, but she can hear it.

“Are you?”

Blake is silent for a moment, holding one of Yang’s hands and playing with her fingers. “Yes.”

“Me too.” The truth, at least, feels good.

Blake turns her head, hair brushing under Yang’s chin, and presses a kiss to her cheek. It is so soft, light as a finger brushing over the pages of a book, but not a way Blake’s ever expressed her affection before. Yang’s heart is bobbing in her throat. Part of her wants to turn to Blake and complete the effect, kiss her and complete the spell.

The wind picks up then, whistling through the grass, and she tenses. Thunder cracks in the distance and a gust buffets them, tearing at their hair and clothes, and Blake grabs the rose behind her ear. The wind strips the leaves and roses from the bushes, hurling them high into the air, hundreds of rose petals swirling against the black sky.

She looks around, expecting to hear the growling of Grimm, or at least shouting from the manor. But there’s nothing. As quickly as it started, the wind dies down again, sweeping away leaves and petals while letting some fall to the ground around them. Yang picks a few out of her own hair, then a few from Blake’s.

“She’s close,” Blake says.

It’s less ominous and more factual, especially coming from Blake. Yang sets her chin on top of Blake’s head again, hoping she understands: _I don’t want to move just yet_. She must, because Blake relaxes into her again, and Yang enjoys holding up the weight of her partner with her own body.

She feels so powerless, she realizes. There’s no cure for this feeling except to hold Blake tighter, keep the one thing close to her Salem cannot take, is not allowed to so much as look at. Whatever happens in the eye of the storm, Blake’s right. They’re protecting each other. And she wants that kiss one day soon, too.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to @aerohaze on tumblr for sending me the prompt for this, which was writing a scene I want to see between the bees in V8. this is less something I think would actually happen and more just...wish fulfillment? but the emotional core of what I want from the bees in V8 is there.
> 
> I didn't really set out to make this so yangsty, but ended up doing it anyway, lmao. the title of the fic is a quote from jean coctaeu's 1946 film adaptation of beauty and the beast, "La Belle et la Bête."
> 
> as always, hang out with me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/dandelionsnight) or [Tumblr!](https://dandelionsknight.tumblr.com/)


End file.
